Place Attachment and Tornado Risk Perception in the Oklahoma City Metro Area

It has long been known that individuals develop perceptions about risks based upon numerous cognitive, social and cultural factors. However, a potentially important issue that has received relatively little attention is individual perceptions about, and attachments to, the place in which environmental risks are situated. Limited research on the subject raises concern that these perceptions may facilitate or inhibit comprehension of messages about threats-in-motion, leading people to personalize threats not only through nearness, but also a priori expectations of landscapes, geopolitical boundaries, and hyper-local notions of hazards climatology. The research presented here explores these issues in the Oklahoma City metro area, revealing the extent to which perceptions of risk proneness may be related to the various lenses through which people understand their environment and their relationship to it.